Everything That Burns Read online

  She took a bite of a too-sweet dessert. “If it were the right change?”

  Lazare’s napkin now resembled a listing balloon. “And how do we know if it’s the right change?”

  “If it’s for the good. If I have to put on a white gown with a tricolor sash, what of it? If I come here and show my face and they toast me, and it helps Paris’s poor children, why not? I am not so very proud.” But as she said the words, she felt less certain. Was it possible to change too much? Or in the wrong direction, so that the changes you made took you to some place other than you’d intended?

  “Your motives at least are good,” Lazare said, softening.

  Rebellion sparked in her. “Not always.”

  His dark gaze traveled to her mouth, and for a moment she thought about finally telling him what she was doing with magic, how she couldn’t control it. And that sometimes she didn’t even want to.

  It would be a relief to finally be honest. For though she basked in his praise, it was beginning to feel like a costly and beloved jacket that had grown too tight. If she told him, would he say she was right to do it? That magic was nothing to him? That he trusted her?

  She had no way to tell. And when he was looking at her like this—so intensely her heart began to race—she didn’t want to find out.

  “You are true,” he said finally, “while others are only playing parts. Take the duc.” Nearby a tall man lounged at a crowded table, surrounded by eager hangers-on. “He calls himself Philippe Égalité, but no one forgets he’s still the powerful Duc d’Orléans, cousin to King Louis. Or that he himself wouldn’t mind being king if things changed. When it’s convenient for the cause, his name and title will be used against him. What’s to say they’re not using you and me in the same way—to put on a good show?” He crumpled his napkin into a ball. “They’re pretenders, all of them. And I hate the feeling of their hands on my soul.”

  The strangeness at the balloon launch came back to her. “Has something happened, Lazare?”

  He shook his head. “I wish I didn’t have to pretend right along with them.”

  While the toasts rang out in the warm, well-lit room, outside in the streets, the people of Paris still starved. Suspected magicians were dragged from their shops. Bakers who ran out of bread were strung up from lampposts. Only yesterday Sophie had confided she’d heard about a list with the names of antirevolutionary nobles written on it in blood. But Camille had said nothing about these things in her speech. Instead, she’d said what the organizers had wanted her to say.

  Was that pretending, too?

  There was a sudden commotion in the hall as one of the double doors swung open. A young man appeared, dressed in the uniform of the National Guard. The room stilled, heads pivoting toward him. “Monsieur Mellais?” he called out over the assembled guests. “Monsieur Mellais?”

  Lazare rose from his chair, the music fading as everyone stared.

  When the guard reached the table, he handed Lazare a letter. He cracked the seal and quickly read through the note. He gave instructions to the messenger, who retreated back through the hall and out the door.

  Lazare seemed suddenly very far away.

  “What is it?” she asked urgently.

  “There’s been an incident, mon âme.” The paper shook in his hand. “The corps had been planning to go eventually to Lille, near the border with the Austrian Netherlands. Lafayette wants a garrison there, with one or two balloons, to gather information at the border. But the time line has been moved up. An Austrian man was caught distributing antirevolutionary pamphlets near there, and Lafayette is sending us now.”

  “But why you? I thought he wanted you on the ground.” Safe.

  “The pilots don’t have the experience. No one expected an incident so early, not while they were still in training. If I go with them, and we fly together, I can guide them.”

  All the way to Lille? “When?”

  He tore the letter in half. “Lafayette wants us to leave tomorrow, if the weather holds. It will reassure the people, he says.”

  Something else gnawed at him, she could tell. She saw it in his restless movements, the way he raked his hand through his hair. “What is it, Lazare?”

  “For it to work, we must fly together … I do not know if they will listen to me.”

  Puzzled, Camille said, “The other aeronauts? But they must—”

  “What if they don’t consider me their leader?” He tore the letter in half again. “I am an amateur and not military trained. I got my position through … connections. They mistrust me because of the way Lafayette treats me—we are both of equal rank, after all. And there is, as always,” he said bitterly, “the color of my skin.”

  At the launch, she’d seen the pilots’ sharp looks. “This cannot be tolerated—”

  “No? I am well used to it.” His voice was grim. “And if it isn’t my Indian blood, it’s my title and my wealth. Caught in between, neither one thing or the other, I cannot win.” He managed to tear torn paper in half again. “To them I am different, and that’s what matters. They haven’t disobeyed one of my orders yet, but how can I trust them when I hear the things they say? Their suspicious stares? And yet”—he ripped the letter into tinier and tinier pieces—“I must. For Lafayette, for France, for the Revolution.” He let the shreds of the letter fall onto his plate.

  “Look at me.” Slowly, he turned his beautiful face toward her. She loved the scar that sliced through his eyebrow for what it said about his fearlessness, the inky tilt of his lashes that framed the worlds in his eyes. “You are better than ten thousand of those pilots. Fifty thousand! Lafayette knows you alone have the knowledge to guide this flight. That’s why he came to you. There’s no one else in France who can do it. Everything you are goes into what you do. And they are fools if they don’t realize it.”

  He glanced helplessly around the noisy, crowded ballroom. “Do you ever wish that there was a place where it wasn’t like this? Where things were different? Where we might simply be?”

  Her throat tightened. “All the time.”

  “Remind me of it when I return,” he said sorrowfully, “for now I must take my leave.”

  “But I’ll see you at the Champ de Mars—did Lafayette say what time the launch will be?”

  “He says it’s military only.” He took her hand and pressed his mouth to her knuckles. It was suddenly unbearable that she would not be allowed to see him off.

  “Why would he care if I were there? Wasn’t I once an aeronaut?” she added.

  Faintly, he smiled. “I would rather have you with me than anyone. But you will help me most by following his orders.”

  “I can at least walk you out.”

  He shook his head. “Please stay. I can’t be responsible for you not finishing your cake. À bientôt, mon âme.”

  He made his way out of the room, avoiding questions as best as he could, making for the doors. This was his occupation now, she told herself. This is what he did. She too did what she must. Still, fury crackled through her when she thought of the men who refused to see him as their leader because of the color of his skin. So far the revolution had not delivered equality.

  The room fading around her, she saw in her mind the best version of the launch, as if she could work magic to turn a tarnished event into gold. No military band, no fluttering flags, no proudly worn badges. Instead there would be a serene sky, a flurry of efficient activity as the balloons were prepared for the journey. Various members of the corps running back and forth, carts arriving with more straw and cut wood. No suspicion or disrespect on their part. She and Lazare would kiss before he ran to his balloon and vaulted inside. The ropes would be untied as the brazier fires flared, and slowly, majestically, the balloons would rise. The crew on the ground would cheer. And she, the only bystander, would applaud as the balloons rose into the morning sky.

  Watching a balloon rise always filled her with hope. A thing of the earth—a silk sack, a wicker gondola—transformed into a thin
g of the air. It was one of the most beautiful things she knew.

  At the ornate double doors, Lazare paused to survey the crowded room. When he spotted her, he smiled that crooked, one-sided smile she adored, full of promise and determination.

  It would be a flight of great uncertainty.

  It was nothing new, but it still was hard. She waved adieu and, though he was too far away to hear, she softly entreated, “Please come back to me.”

  23

  It was past ten when she left the revolutionary party. At the door, guests eager to be seen with the pamphleteer offered her a ride in their carriages, but she told them she needed fresh air. Lazare’s words tinted her thoughts, so that in each of their smiles she saw only the glint of want: she was a means to an end for them, nothing more.

  Outside, Camille inhaled: the air was brisk, sharp with wood smoke. Far above the stars were faint as pinpricks. Passing through pools of darkness and pools of yellow lamplight on her short walk home, she was deep in her thoughts about Lazare and his disdain of pretending as she crossed the Place des Vosges. But when she turned onto her own street, she was jolted out of her reveries.

  At the iron gate to the Hôtel Séguin stood five guards of the Comité.

  They were like fragments of gloom: long cloaks, muttered words like curses rising into the night. And straining on the end of a lead, a giant dog built like a bull. It shoved its massive head against the gate as it sniffed the air.

  She pressed her back to the Hôtel Séguin’s stone wall, flattening herself away from the street lamp. In her ears, the blood pounded so hard she strained to hear what they were saying. Keeping to the shadows, she crept closer.

  Accidently she kicked a pebble and the dog raised his head, ears swiveling. The man who held the lead spun in her direction. Under the brim of his hat, the grim line of his mouth was an angry slash.

  “What is it?” one of them said.

  The dog gave a low, harsh growl. “Puissant heard something.”

  For several heartbeats she waited. Not daring to breathe. If she’d had that vial of blur, she thought desperately, she could have snuck around to the stables. But now she was trapped.

  Puissant lowered his head, snuffled again at the gate. “A rat, no doubt.”

  In the light that fell from the gate’s lantern, the men loomed monstrous. Already bigger than ordinary men, their high-crowned hats made them even taller, as did the long cloaks that twitched at the slightest movement. On their shoulders glowed the badge of the Comité: a white hand, fingertips blackened, surrounded by flames. Magic burning. One of them held a branch that gleamed dull silver in his hand.

  The biggest one grabbed the gate and shook it so it rattled. “Open up! We have a search warrant!”

  On the second floor of her house, a window suddenly brightened. Someone was there, watching. Adèle? Sophie? Soon they’d discover she wasn’t home. Perhaps they already knew, perhaps they were waiting for her. Either way they’d be frantic with worry. Her pulse ticked faster. Their fear for her might make them open the door. Cross the courtyard to see if she was in trouble—

  The gatehouse door opened and ancient Timbault stepped out, a determined scowl on his face. “It’s late, messieurs. Go to bed. Warrant or not, you’re not coming in.”

  The dog barked. Saliva dripped from its long yellow teeth. “We are here by order of the Comité. King’s business.”

  Through the glowing window’s thin curtain, Sophie stared out, statue-still. Camille wished she could signal to her somehow. What if the guards came to the door? Came inside? Sophie was strong, Camille knew. But they might take her as a witness, or use her to get to Camille. It was an old familiar fear, growing new tentacles.

  The burly guard shook a length of chain at Timbault. “We will pull this gate down if we have to.”

  Timbault shrugged. “Try it.”

  They conferred, and then one of the smaller guards said, “Warded, is it?”

  Timbault said nothing. The dog raised its head and howled, the frustrated call of a predator denied what it wanted.

  “These old houses,” the burly one spat. “Centuries of magic to tear down. But it’s possible.”

  Long minutes went by as they argued. More windows were illuminated in the Hôtel Séguin, and the lawyer who lived across the street came out to stand in his doorway, holding his own growling mastiff by the collar. Anything the Comité tried would wake the neighborhood, and for now, at least, they wished to seem lawful, more like the police than the mob.

  As Camille waited—like an owl, she thought, staring into the night—something shifted.

  “We’ll be back, traitor,” one of the guards threatened. “You won’t keep us out forever.” And with one last shove at the gate, the red-cloaked figures and their dog melted into the night.

  Camille sank back against the wall. Waited until she had heard every last footstep diminish into silence. And then she slunk to the gate, not daring to step into the light of Timbault’s lantern.

  But he’d already seen her. “Madame,” he hissed. “Get inside now!” The bolt was shot, the key turning in the lock, and she was inside. “To the house,” he ordered her, “before they return!”

  She fled across the court and up the stairs, where Daumier was waiting to let her in.

  “Mon Dieu!” Instantly Sophie had her arms around Camille. “I can’t believe you were out there with them!”

  “This night of all nights I decide to walk home alone!” Camille sagged onto the marble bench as Adèle, Sophie, and silent Daumier, who stood with his back against the closed doors, regarded her worriedly. “Everything is all right. They’ve gone.”

  “All right?” Sophie squeaked. “The Comité was at our door!”

  “At the gate, and we survived.” She tucked her hands under her skirts to keep them from shaking. “Timbault and the house protected us.”

  “It is warded,” Adele agreed. “Every magician who owned this house worked magic to keep it and its people safe. But if they come inside—”

  “That will not happen,” Camille said briskly.

  “We do have to go outside,” Sophie snapped. “Occasionally.”

  Daumier tried to diffuse their worry. “It’s not you they want. It’s what’s in the house.”

  The bleeding tapestries. The bespelled artifacts. The documents covered in invisible ink, the oils of magical landscapes, the mirrors that reflected other rooms than their own. The floors, the chandeliers, the enchanted locks, the armaments. The snuffboxes and the curios and everything in the attics she’d not yet dared to examine. Her dress. The books. They would burn it all.

  Or would they use it as evidence to try a magician?

  “Daumier,” she said, “are you familiar with weapons in the armory?”

  He inclined his head.

  “Please outfit yourself, Timbault, and everyone in the house who wants one with a weapon. What would you give Timbault? A musket?”

  “Consider it done.” With a bow, Daumier disappeared down the hall toward the room where the ancient weapons could sometimes be heard, muttering like knives being sharpened.

  That night she wrote an urgent letter.

  There was no time to waste, now that she’d learned the Hôtel Séguin—and possibly she herself—were in the Comité’s sights.

  As she waited for the ink to dry, she listened to the house rattle and clink. It sounded as if it were being fitted with armor, metal scales creeping over its windows and doors. But there would always be a chink in it.

  If she knew anything, it was that there was always a way in.

  24

  A worried response to her letter arrived from Chandon early the next the day, informing Camille that he and Blaise would arrive by noon. Now that the house’s clocks were striking twelve, she felt the ancient house waiting. Biding its time. If she were forced to say what it was waiting for, she would say: more magicians. More magic.

  As if there wasn’t already enough.

  In the front s
alon, she pulled aside the curtain. The street was empty but for a few pigeons pecking at manure. No sign of the Comité. Or the boys. She was so intent on watching that she startled when Adèle came up behind her to say a gardener had come to the stable door, inquiring about a position.

  “But we already have a gardener.”

  Adèle faltered. “He says you have been expecting him?”

  “I’ll come and speak to him.” Adèle led her to the kitchen entrance at the back of the house. Camille stepped down into the kitchen, where a scullery maid scrubbing carrots was glancing nervously at the gardener. Obscuring his face was a felt toque covered with bits of straw and mud, as if it had been dropped in a particularly dirty street.

  Chandon.

  And behind him, so pale he could only ever belong indoors, was Blaise, looking uncomfortable and furtive in a straw hat.

  “I know them,” she said to the startled staff. “If you’ll come with me, mes amis?”

  Once they were out of the kitchen, Chandon grasped her arm. “Why the urgent letter—has something happened to the books? You haven’t found something about tempus fugit, have you?”

  She shook her head. “The Comité was here last night.”

  “Merde!” Chandon swore. As the boys huddled close, she told them what had happened. When she’d finished her story, their faces were drawn and white with shock.

  “And you, outside, unprotected by the wards!” Blaise muttered. “I do not envy you that.”

  “But how did the Comité know to come here?”

  “That pale branch you saw them carrying—during the Affair of the Poisons, it was believed to be useful in locating magicians, like a dowsing rod finds water. Or the dogs smell something. But really, I wonder if they have maps,” Blaise said thoughtfully, “of magic houses in Paris.”

  Such things existed? “Is Bellefleur on it, too?”

  “Hence the bone entrance,” Chandon replied.

  How could they both be so calm—as if this was nothing? “Won’t they keep coming back until they get in?”